The wolftime, p.2
The Wolftime, page 2
The alert had fallen silent some time during the drill but the deck was still bathed in the dim amber glow of emergency lighting. Rossi’s face was lit from beneath by the bluish glare of the firing prompt, its small screen dormant for the moment, awaiting trajectory orders from the gunnery lieutenant, who in turn would receive target data and firing solutions from the main strategium.
Ensign Cappagan poked his head through the narrow doorway of the turret.
‘Fine work, crew four!’ he declared. ‘Fast and accurate, that’s what we like to see. Double rations of bellyfire for you when we see the other side of this fracas.’
The crew gave a hesitant cheer but Cappagan was already leaving, his querulous voice raised to berate crew three on their perceived tardiness. Lether’s apology drifted back down the deck.
‘What’s a frakker?’ asked Cassonette. She flicked a look around the others, confused.
‘You are,’ said Rossi, shaking his head.
‘I’d rather have that sup now,’ muttered Moaro. He flexed thick arms as he adjusted his grip on the loading pin, rough tattoos of void whales and anatomically exaggerated women bulging across his dark brown skin. ‘This doesn’t feel good.’
Orad had to agree. He wasn’t sure what a directed gravimetric wave was, but it sounded powerful and rare to affect a ship in warp transit.
They had just a few minutes to wait until the amber lights were joined by renewed sirens – clusters of three that signalled the stand-to-action across the ship. Elsewhere void shields were raised, engines powered, targeting augurs cast across the void. Processes Orad was only dimly aware of but nevertheless thankful for.
‘Target data incoming!’ The shout echoed down the gun deck from ensign to ensign, repeated a few seconds later across the crackling intervox by Lieutenant Grier.
Rossi cupped his eyes with his hands and focused on the flickering numbers and symbols that appeared in the firing prompt. He did not look up as he spoke, the words coming as a single monotonous train of syllables, little different to a servitor.
‘Aft thirty degrees lock decline twelve degrees lock load channel three thirty second fuse lock.’ The gun captain drew in a breath as the others moved to obey. Orad watched the traverse scope tumbler moving in the ceiling above his lever as he pulled aftwards. ‘Bastard’s coming almost straight at us, fast. Report.’
‘Locked thirty degrees aft,’ barked Orad as he leaned on the braking handle. He was always impressed by Rossi’s ability to visualise the target based on a bunch of numbers. The gunner had tried to pass the captaincy test three times but he didn’t have a head for translating the numbers into action. To him they might as well have been xenos gabble.
‘Locked twelve degrees declined.’
‘Loaded and locked from channel three, thirty second fuse confirmed. Firing primed.’
‘Clear for firing.’ Rossi’s order had them ducking into the sound-insulated semi-bunker at the front of the turret, away from the building-sized breech above and to the rear. The chain of the firing handle went taut in his grip through the door of the shelter-chamber. The gun captain’s eyes fixed on the unlit red lumen in the wall.
The firing lumen lit, bathing them all in its scarlet glare.
Rossi pulled the firing chain.
A chain reaction of mechanics and alchemy that Orad did not quite understand caused a thunderous boom to reverberate through the turret, magnified by others crashing across the gun deck. Only a few seconds separated the start and end of the cacophony, a near-simultaneous broadside. After a few seconds the walls stopped vibrating and they made their way back into the main turret room, Rossi letting go of the firing handle to return to the prompt screen, now blank.
Had they hit anything? They would never find out. Not only was it impossible to tell in the fierce maelstrom of a gun barrage which shell detonated where, there was nothing to be learned from it. If they were close enough, that was a credit to the targeting calculations. If they weren’t, then a servitor somewhere had gone awry.
‘Stand by for firing!’ the call came again.
The Rigorous managed one more volley before a rare but much more worrying order rang along the gun deck.
‘Report to weapons lockers, prepare for boarders!’
Ensign Cappagan’s voice was quite shrill as he passed this on to the gun crews under his watch. A squad of armsmen in blue carapace armour and helms, shotguns and boarding gaffes in hand, moved to the three weapons locker doors along the deck, while the gun captains and their seconds – Rossi and Moaro for gun four – queued up for the issue of two heavy laspistols and two shock batons, plus an energy cell for each.
Rossi kept one pistol and gave the other to Cassonette, while Orad and Moaro received the batons. The Rigorous was fast enough to elude most enemies bigger than the ship, but powerful enough to outgun anything smaller. It was only the fourth time Orad had held a weapon, and on previous occasions he’d returned it to the locker unused.
The ship was coming under fire but there was little sign of it in the lower gun deck, and the void shields seemed to be holding well. The occasional static fuzz in the air signalled a generator coming back online after failing, but there was no distinctive crash of munitions against the hull or the whine of pressure breach alerts.
‘Brace for impact!’ came the sudden warning followed by the double blare of the siren signal.
Rossi was first into the firing chamber, followed by Orad. Cassonette was just inside the door when the ship bucked madly, throwing Moaro hard against the autoloader. He fell to the ground with blood streaming from a cut across his temple, shaking his head groggily, even as Cassonette fell onto Orad and the two of them thudded into the padded sound-dampeners that lined the walls. Rossi had almost fallen to the floor, down on one knee.
‘Dark of the abyss, what was that?’ spat Cassonette, untangling herself from Orad.
Rossi pushed past to inspect Moaro, who was down on all fours, blood streaming from the cut.
‘Medi–’
Rossi’s shout was lost in an ear-splitting crash that sent them all tumbling across the gun turret to slam into the outer wall. Buckling metal shrieked not far away, accompanied by the shrill call of pressure drop warnings and the slamming of emergency doors. Orad caught the crackle of flames before the barriers came down.
The lights flickered red and amber, the circuits broken, pitching everything into a hellish strobe that made Orad dizzy as he tried to stand up. He looked behind him. Moaro was in a really bad way, vomit on the floor next to him. Rossi was holding his shoulder as though it was dislocated or broken. Cassonette met Orad’s gaze with a grim look and took his proffered hand to help herself up.
‘I thought I heard the lieutenant,’ she said. ‘Something about being rammed.’
‘Rammed?’ Orad laughed despite their situation. ‘Who would be stupid enough to ram a starship?’
The answer would be coming soon. Gunfire echoed down the deck followed by the screams of wounded gunners. Flashing lights threw long shadows across the doorway to the turret. Orad moved closer, flexing his fingers on the cudgel in his hands, thumb stroking the battery ignition stud in readiness.
Grunts and bellows – wordless or unintelligible – accompanied a fresh spate of gunfire. The shadows loomed larger and the tramp of booted feet grew louder. Orad stood trembling, caught between the desire to fight and the urge to hide. He pulled the baton over his shoulder ready to strike backhand, and gave Cassonette another look. She met his gaze with a nod and with unspoken agreement they both stepped out into the accessway.
Just half a dozen yards ahead of them was a green-skinned monster, about as tall as Orad but with long, heavily muscled arms and sloped broad shoulders. It had an elongated jaw lined with brutal fangs, a stubby flared-nostril nose and glaring red eyes. A clawed hand brought up a pistol, a wisp of black smoke drifting from the muzzle. The creature’s other hand held the bloodstained shirt of Ensign Cappagan, the bloodied mess of his remains dangling inside the garment, almost unrecognisable.
Cassonette screamed and jumped forward. The pistol boomed and her head disappeared, smearing greasily across Orad’s face, bits of bone scratching at his skin. He hollered wordlessly, the club falling from his fingers, legs buckling under him. Gasping and sobbing, he looked up just as a green fist swung down, bringing darkness and silence.
Chapter One
TERRORSTORM
DELAYED GRATIFICATION
OLD BLOOD, NEW BLOOD
The traitors brought the storm with them and the heavens were clad in midnight. The broken miles-high spires of Holkenved were swallowed by dark clouds billowing down from the void, descending upon the ruin of the hive city as a flock of carrion eaters on a corpse. And like a scavenging flock there was movement within the cloud, churning and twisting, pushing into broken portways and sliding along cracked viaducts.
Where the miasma came, suffocating blackness followed. The last fitful stutters of lumen globes and lightstrips were snuffed out by the encroaching shadow. The whirr of atmocirculators became mechanical stammers that sighed into silence, throttling the least movement, as though every molecule had been seized in a freezing grip. Dead air chilled by altitude sank through the levels of the city, piling down into great crevasses of metal and ferrocrete carved by a twenty-day onslaught of orbital wrath. Shadow and chill stalked the corridors of palaces and swept into slave pens. The umbra flowed over bloating carcasses; it caressed time-rigid corpses; inhaling dying breaths still hanging in the air.
Tendrils of icy dark quested through the broken spire heights, pushing blindly through the devastation until they sensed the first traces of life. Sluggishly, but with increasing purpose, the blackness slithered towards these knots of warmth: it was not the mortal radiation of breath or blood that it hunted but the immaterial heat of human souls.
The first prey the creeping fog discovered were scattered survivors, cut off from the rest of the hive by collapsed walls, ruptured hallways and miles-deep shafts cut by starship lance strikes. Such barriers penned in noble and servant alike. To the deadly cloud all were the same, too. Each was a flicker of nourishment that tasted as sweet whether it came from the descendant of three millennia of inbred Holkenved aristocracy or the child that cleaned out the waste pipes. Some perished of fright, their final screams cutting ripples through the cloud before being quenched. Many hurled themselves to the depths or dashed their heads out upon the jagged rubble, driven by the whispers that presaged the blackness, unable to bear the voices’ constant urgings of self-hate. Others suffocated in the cloying un-air that followed the advancing miasma, or had their blood turned to ice as wisps of voidmist passed through their hearts.
Barely sustained by the morsels of the spires, the hungering fog flowed onward. Miles down from the summit, life glowed like the embers of a fire, stoked to flame in places. Though no soul was stronger than any other, in togetherness there was a strength, a combined light that baulked the shadow. Here and there such flames wreathed as protective rings, centred on officers and priests. But for every castle of faith there were also gaps where terror reigned still. As though guided on a leash, the darkness flowed back and forth across the city levels, probing, exploring the boundaries between the vulnerable and the strong, filling chambers of the factories and dormitories of the peasantry while steering away from the blazing cathedra and shrines.
When all the upper reaches of the hive were invested with darkness, the storm writhed again. Lightning clawed down from the boiling cloud, scattering over the cracked skin of the ancient city, driving into the open wounds upon its mountainous body. Pulse after pulse of white energy split the skies until the summit of Holkenved was aflame with strikes and the blackness convulsed with immaterial power.
The screaming, twisting column of energy drove deeper and deeper into Holkenved, splitting and merging as it raced along halls, avenues and tunnels, speeding through the darkness but a part of it also.
A fresh wave of pure terror struck the companies arrayed in defence of the hive’s mid-layers. Despite the barked warnings of commissars, veterans and new recruits alike cast down their weapons and fled, to be rewarded by sharp las-bolts in their backs. Those that remained clung grimly to their weapons, tears streaking their faces as every nightmare remembered and imagined welled up in their thoughts. Some were physically sick with dismay, others fought back with mumbled prayers that sounded weak against the cloying silence that possessed the hive.
There were wings in the tempest, but not of crows and ravens. The scarlet flare of jump packs and gleam of eye-lenses fell with the storm; sparks within a darker shadow with teeth of explosive bolts and claws of plasma. As though birthed by the storm itself, figures woven from darkness and lightning erupted from the gloom, joyous screeches and laughter filling the void with noise. Encased in suits of armour older even than Holkenved, carried upon crooked wings and infernal power, the traitors burst upon the defenders even as the thunderous storm broke, its detonation scattering the upper reaches as ash and debris. Amid defiant las-fire and the bark of autocannons, the warriors of the storm replied with their own guns and, scant seconds later, with cruel blades and claws.
The Night Lords.
Terror heralded their coming and death rode the lightning.
Gaius had been commanded to ignore the screams, but it was hard. Enhanced hearing, boosted further by the auto-senses of his warplate, meant that the cacophony of dread-filled howls and panicked shrieking cut short was ever-present.
Even so, the Primaris Marine followed orders and remained where he was with the rest of the strike force. There were seven others in his Intercessor squad. They had landed on Caldon IV with ten. Heindal and Gestartas had died during the landing, blasted apart by defence guns once employed to protect the domains of the Emperor but now turned against His warriors.
The squad was one of six in the strike force, itself part of a deployment company of one hundred and twenty Space Marines. All were Unnumbered Sons – Primaris brothers that had yet to be formed into new Chapters or adopted by one that shared their gene-seed. When they had left Terra three relative-years ago there had been two hundred and fifty of them.
They might have been Unnumbered but Gaius hoped someone, somewhere, was counting the dead.
Against the urge of warrior pride it made sense to allow the Astra Militarum and the loyal defence regiments of Holkenved to take the brunt of the Night Lords’ counter-landing. Had the traitors been waiting for the warriors of the Lord Commander to attempt to retake Caldon IV? Or had the Night Lords been brought to a fortunate intervention by the vagaries of the warp – if indeed they were vagaries for servants of the Dark Powers?
Gaius did not overly concern himself with the grander affairs of the Indomitus Crusade. It was enough to be a part of it; to destroy the enemy before him and see their plans undone. To him the higher matters seemed abstract. Like pieces being exchanged on a game board, armies moved across the stars, fighting over worlds while fleets obliterated each other in the void. All that mattered was the singular purpose of the Lord Commander: to reclaim the Imperium from its foes.
‘Keep your focus, listen for the command,’ reminded Lieutenant Astopites. He spoke calmly and slowly. Though he did not move, his cadence matched the same tempo he used when pacing up and down the squad ranks during drill. Gaius pictured a ghost version of his superior moving among the strike force with deliberate strides and knew exactly where he would have been had he not remained standing by the great doors of the hall in which they were mustered. Astopites was a Firstborn warrior of the Novamarines, inches shorter and thirty decades older than Gaius and his Primaris companions.
‘Every cry you hear is a sacrifice. Just as He on Terra must endure for the Imperium to survive, so we too must endure this test now.’
Amid the noise of human suffering and desperate defence, Gaius caught the distant report of bolters and crackle of energy weapons. The Night Lords were butchering their way closer.
‘They must know we’re here, brother-lieutenant,’ said Sergeant Faulkstein in the Aggressor squad to Gaius’ left.
‘Of course they do, brother-sergeant.’
Imaginary Astopites was at the end of the second line, just in front of Sergeant Cormacca’s squad. Gaius pictured him without moving his head from parade ground straight-ahead or even a flicker of his eyes – a side-benefit of tactical visual mnemonic processes included in the Primaris psychodoctrination package. Possessing extended kinaesthesia that extended far further than a normal human’s senses, Gaius was instinctively aware of the proximity of his battle-brothers. There was a rumour that Astopites inloaded lens display feedback data to check whether any of his warriors ever faltered in their steady gaze during inspection. If he did, none of them had ever been faulted for it.
As he waited patiently for the coming confrontation, Gaius thought about the enemy force. A number of Night Lords flotillas and companies had been preying on worlds all along the Iron Veil – a boundary zone within reach of the Great Rift but not directly touched by it. More importantly, the worlds of the veil fell along a kind of political fault line, as Gaius understood it, surrounded by wilderness systems between the sectors historically aligned to Fenris and those patrolled by a Black Templars crusade. On top of that, it curved on the very fringes of the semi-official demesne of Ironhold and the Knights of House Kamidar. Before the arrival of the Iron Veil task force from Battle Group Retributus, the local Imperial commanders had suffered a lack of external allies to call upon.
At first Gaius had thought it remarkable that a few thousand Traitor Astartes had subjugated a dozen worlds. However, a communication from Lord Commander Guilliman had explained how so few could conquer so many. Not by strength of arms: that would have been impossible. Something far more devastating had been unleashed upon the Iron Veil: fear. Such was the terror of the Night Lords that the threat of attack was enough for each of the Iron Veil rulers to bow the knee to the Sons of Curze and pay tribute to stave off their arrival.
